Sean Harris

As a printmaker, Sean Harris has exhibited widely in the UK, including at the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Society of Painter Printmakers and in two solo touring exhibitions originated by Ruthin Craft Centre (Wales' premiere venue for the applied arts). He has won numerous prizes and awards including two prestigious Creative Wales Awards from the Arts Council of Wales, the first of which enabled early experiments in animation. Since moving into the field of film-making, he has collaborated extensively with communities and major cultural institutions including the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. His films, which feature a plethora of animated museum objects alongside imagined artifacts, have been screened internationally and his print work is in numerous private and public collections including the National Library of Wales. He lives with his family in Llangynog, which is in the middle of nowhere in Powys, Wales.

This series of figurines evolved from the need for a prop for his first animated short Hela’r Twrch Trwyth (Hunting the Twrch Trwyth). This ancient Welsh tale relates the pursuit of a gang of demonic wild boar across southern Wales by King Arthur (making his first appearance in global literature) and associates. The Twrch Trwyth, the chief boar, carries a golden comb, razor and shears in his mane – these being the objects of Arthur’s desire. In the film, Arthur and his son Gwydre – in the manner of warriors of the Celtic Iron Age – have boar helmet crests. Arthur’s is based on a real bronze figurine found in the course of archaeological excavations at Gaerfawr in Powys, but Gwydre’s needed to be imagined and made. And so it was, inspired by Iron Age figurines and the animation artwork from the film. However, the resulting piece was obviously far more than a prop; rather a work of art in its own right. And so these limited edition figurines, which might be described as ‘imagined artifacts’, came into being; the Twrch Trwyth himself and his two lieutenants, Llwydawg the Hewer and Grugyn Silver-Bristle, ready to rampage across Ireland and Wales once more…